I was talking to a couple of musicians I know, as usual almost all of them have family musical backgrounds.
I am a bassist (so is my sister) but none of my parents are musical, in fact none of my family members really play any instruments.
In many ways, from my perspective I feel like musical ability is mostly nurtured and has nothing to do with heredity.
But yet again when I listen to music, I almost never pay attention to the lyrics, instead I tune in entirely on the drum/bass track and sometimes I even whistle a complementary track to the song. I did that all without knowledge of any musical theories, I was never "nurtured" musically.
Instead, music is the kind of thing that just occurred to me one day that I should pick up a bass and start mimicking the bassist in the cd. I started performing within 7 months of picking up the instrument and people were asking me how many years have I played. I just find it weird how almost every musician (including my sister)I know started their career through musical education, formal or informal.
Is deliberate musical education really the only way to make a musician out of a person?
So what do you think?
Is music something naturally in all of us just waiting for it to be discovered or is it a foreign concept introduced through means of deliberate societal interference (ex.family background) or purely by heredity?